The Main Theatre of the Redfern Arts Center got a new addition this month.
New curtains were put up at the Main Theatre. Theatre Operations Manager Jeremy Robarge said the main issue with the old curtains was that they weren’t flame-resistant.
“It had to get treated every three years, and had been treated every three years since we got it in 1980,” said Robarge. “It got to the point of ‘this is critical, we have to replace it or we’re not going to have one.’”
Robarge said the new curtain is flame-resistant and won’t have to be treated like the old curtains.
“The other one was also getting to the point where it was getting very discolored,” he said. “You could see generations of dust. It had a few holes in it. It was starting to get almost threadworn in certain places where people grab it a lot.”
Robarge said this was the primary reasoning to attain the finances necessary to purchase the curtains.
“Because of the cost, it wouldn’t fit in our normal budget,” he said. “So we basically got proposals, [we] got what the estimates would be.”
“It didn’t quite reach the level of being a capital replacement,” he added. “So it went in as a reserve ask.”
The project was a part of the department’s budget submission last spring after attaining the necessary approval.
Robarge said the installation went well.
“Installing [curtains] is pretty easy,” he said. “The main curtain’s on a track, so it can open and close, and it’s just little hooks, so we basically unhooked the old one and hooked on the new one.”
“The valance, which is the shorter one that goes in front of it, just ties onto a pipe, so changing them is pretty easy,” he added.
Robarge said it took the team under an hour to replace the curtain.
“The old one was much heavier, it was much thicker material,” he said. “To get that bundled up and out the door so the Grounds can take it away and dispose of it probably took us longer.”
Along with the main curtains and the valance, the department also replaced their cyclorama and the scrim curtain.
“They were at the end of their life as well,” Robarge said. “Those have been replaced several times because they just wore out.”
The Main Theatre curtains are some of the last to be replaced on campus. The curtains in the Mabel Brown Room were replaced after a stain accident.
“The curtain that was there was also too short, so they got the right-sized one,” said Robarge.
The Madison Street Lounge should be getting new curtains this year, according to Robarge, and the Putnam Theater still needs the new curtains.
“That’ll be the next push for campus,” Robarge said.
Robarge said the new curtains will be good not just for performing students, but also for outside groups.
“We have a lot of community partners that use the stage,” he said. “It sees a lot of use. So several of them were very excited to have nice new shiny curtains.”
Emily Sloane can be contacted at
esloane@kscequinox.com
